Studios tease 3-D at ShoWest

Disney shows off 'Up,' 'Beauty' re-issue

LAS VEGAS — Warner Bros. and Disney whetted the appetites of exhibitors at ShoWest on Tuesday with footage of Buzz Lightyear, Scrooge, Harry Potter and a slew of 3-D extravaganzas, as both studios unveiled extended clips of their upcoming titles.

The Mouse House’s afternoon session was all about 3-D, as the studio unspooled plenty of footage from its format slate, with motion picture group prexy Mark Zoradi serving as emcee.

From this summer’s Pixar entry “Up” to the opening scene of 2010 Valentine’s Day’s re-release “Beauty and the Beast” to one in a series of new shorts called “Cars Toon,” the studio showed off its 3-D chops while stealing a little thunder from DreamWorks Animation’s “Monsters vs. Aliens.”

Up until Tuesday, the DWA release was the talk of the confab, but Disney showed why it’s a huge force to be reckoned with in the 3-D arena.

Disney also made some news when it announced that in October “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2″ will be re-released in 3-D as a double feature for a two-week engagement.

Zoradi went on to introduce 3-D clips from the Jerry Bruckheimer summer rodent actioner “G-Force” along with some very early pre-production footage of the “Tron” sequel. There also were some still images shown — no motion footage is ready yet — of Robert Zemeckis’ November release “A Christmas Carol,” starring Jim Carrey, and of Tim Burton’s March opener “Alice in Wonderland,” starring Johnny Depp and Anne Hathaway.

Things kicked off in the ayem, when Warner topper Alan Horn showed off four of his 2009 pics.

Director McG unspooled five minutes of “Terminator: Salvation”; helmer Todd Phillips intro’d a trailer of the R-rated comedy “The Hangover,” and Horn debuted an extended clip from “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

But the morning’s biggest response was reserved for Robert Downey Jr., who recounted how he got involved with “Sherlock Holmes” — “for an hour and a half after ‘Iron Man’ came out, I could do anything I wanted,” he said — before showing off the Christmas film’s first extended trailer.